Mastering a Niche and Creating Your Own Empire
by writing, speaking, publishing, and product
development
Newsletter #3 / January, 2009
Welcome! I’m Gordon Burgett.
I hope this free newsletter provides useful ideas for the creation and
expansion of your own empire. Its purpose is to help you create “LIFELONG WEALTH
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SPEAKING: Let others hear you at your website.
If you’re a speaker, why not use
about the freest tool around, a short spoken blurb on your website, either on
the opening index page (though that might slow down the unfolding of that text)
or, surely, at the speaking link page where you extol your declamatory talents?
There are two straightforward
formats: one, a quick podcast
(which needn’t be more than five sentences followed by a link that sells what
you offer) or a short video
where we can see and hear, again a pitch to something of greater length
following—which may be a much longer video or podcast.
The logic here is so obvious I will
summarize it: they want to see if you can speak, how you sound, and if your
voice is painfully irritating or disconnected? (The same with your live image:
can they endure looking at you for all that time?)
So, if it’s such a great idea and so
obvious why don’t I have it at my website? I did, often, but I’m in the process
of revamping my entire web structure—including sound and visuals. Check back in
a month or so! In the meantime, check my NSA buddies’ videos at www.wmitchell.com or www.terrypaulson.com. Then ask
yourself, if a programmer was planning to spend many thousands of dollars
booking one of two choices, and one had a live voice (and a speaking image) and
the other had only a still photo plus promises, which is most likely to be
getting the moolah?
In the meantime, if you want more
details about online video and
improving your product selling ratio, let me suggest a dandy e-book that can be
downloaded in a couple of minutes, and put in practice quickly. It’s John
Moreau’s “Improving Conversion Rates on Landing Pages and Websites with Online
Video: A Step-by-Step Guide” It’s hiding here.
In my next newsletter (2/1) let me
share info about creating audio CDs, as I finish an e-book with lots of
step-by-step details about that process.
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PUBLISHING or PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT: Do this before you write the first word of
your self-published book or create your product…
For a book or
web-related product, save the URL (the address page for a website on the Internet)
in .com. In
fact, save several URLs, if possible, pretty much in this order: (1) the book
title, like www.mybooktitle.com; (2) your name, like mine at www.gordonburgett.com; (3) a subject
title, like www.Edsfrogbreedingbook.com, and (4) misspellings of the book title
or your name, to pick up eager buyers but poor spellers. The same if you have a
specific product name. Do that NOW, or before you write the first word or draw
the first design.
Grab them while they are available.
You can get them for under $9 a year (try www.ultracheapdomains.com), and if
you change your mind, change the book or product title, or a year passes and
they are still unwritten projects, you needn’t renew them. Just compose a list
of 20-30 different sites and see what’s already up and claimed. (I wouldn’t use
.net, .org, or others—there’s simply too little commerce there. OK, I have www.nichepublishing.org. It was a
weak moment, .com was snagged—and a huge exception.)
If the URL isn’t available, you
might add a word, like “the,” before your key words (i.e., www.thecatcombercatalog.com), or
“my”…, “a”…, “TomSmiths”…; or an adjective like
“best” or “newest”; the word “finally” or something similar—or something to
follow like “ishere” to www.bobsbook,
before the .com. Don’t use hyphens. I did once and it was the loneliest website
around. (You can try to buy the URL from its current user, but that usually is
very expensive even if they are willing to sell it. You can find the site
owners at www.whois.net. Or, if you believe
in miracles, wait around until somebody lets it lapse after a year or two.)
Why do this? Because
tons of people will go to your URLs to get more information. For books, they
will want to see the covers, table of contents, benefits, testimonials, credentials,
and a free sample chapter or two, plus—alarmingly—your photo and why you wrote
it. Become web-centric. Make it the target of your promotion, write good sales
copy, and be ready to take orders. If you have four or five URLs, you can have
the same copy at each. And even if you don’t send anybody there, lots of
hopeful readers will go there first anyway. Better they see your book or
product than something else!
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PUBLISHING: When your new ink-on-paper book arrives…
Set aside one edition, slap a huge
MASTER COPY label on it, and in it, in red, note all of the errors, typos,
phrases that could be improved, ideas that might be inserted, structural
changes that subsequent editions need, and so on. Then, a couple of months
before you sell the last of the first-run copies, make
the changes and modest design switches in the second edition. Keep asking
others how the book could be improved in the next printing. No book ever sees
print life without a flaw, so the master copy lets you gather all of the
improvements in one place when it’s time to upgrade the second-run manuscript.
It also helps you get those flaws out of your mind while you bask in the
miracle at hand—a book you actually wrote and produced.
(When I was half
my age and even fuller of puff I self-published The Query Book, my first. Despite the fact it was ugly and
too large, I was super proud that it had no errors in it. In a workshop months
after its release someone asked me how they could be sure that their book had
no errors in it. I explained about getting a proofreader, then added, “Of
course you can always send a copy to your smartest cousin and tell her that
you’ll pay her $1 for every legitimate error or typo she finds in your book.”
Five days later I got a tongue-in-cheek letter from one of the attendees saying
that, to her regret, she wasn’t my cousin [nor very smart] but if she were I
would owe her $9. Then she listed nine errors in the book! Loose-lipped pride
before the fall. I sent her a check for $6 and a blank certificate bestowing
SMARTEST COUSINSHIP on her. Three of the “errors” were awkward synonyms that
she shouldn’t have used, but the other six were indeed corrections, though none
in spelling. Thus my master copies were born—and a pinch of humility was
temporarily injected.)
Incidentally, if you are selling
e-books and they are being digitally downloaded from your shopping cart system
as they are bought, should errors be brought to your attention, you can correct
the file immediately and repost it for delivery in its new format within
minutes. Is all of this important? You bet. Experts are judged on every facet
of their supposed expertise. It dims the light when others describe you as
“pretty smart but can’t write (or spelle) worth a
damn.” It’s an unneeded distraction that costs you in confidence and referrals.
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WRITING: Two things to avoid.
Want to know two of the most common errors writers make when submitting
articles (and books)? Both irk editors and are dead giveaways that the writer
is an amateur.
(1) Overusing the semicolon. One semicolon in an article may be once too often,
mostly because it is used incorrectly in place of a comma. My first rewrite
editor said it best: "If you're writing for The New York Times, use it once. Otherwise, keep it for your
novel." (But there is a necessary exception: when you are including a list
that includes commas in the items or phrases listed. Each item [except the
penultimate, which uses a comma] must be separated by a semicolon. A short
example: The championship teams all had height, one with a center 7’1” tall;
speed, and reliable floor generalship.)
(2) Then there’s the hyphen, as in sisters-in-law. When needed, use it—but not as a dash
(like you just saw after “it”). A dash should be an "em"
dash (see insert/symbol/special characters). Sometimes it appears when you hit
two hyphens (without a space in between). Sometimes you have to hit the enter
key after the two hyphens for it to convert. (And sometimes in blogs you have to use two consecutive hyphens to make a
dash.) Use dashes sparingly, but when you do, you usually need a pair of them,
before and after the parenthetical phrase it offsets. And when you use an
"em" dash you do not put a space before or
after it. (I know, you will see the spaces in some books, some newspapers, and
always in
Is misusing them fatal? Not if the prose is
stupendous; the editor will just change them in the final text. But you will
still look like a beginner, and all of the facts and writing will be combed
with a harder eye. Yet if you continue to misuse them after the editor has made
the corrections…
(One more, at no charge: only use the ampersand (&) when it appears in
the original reference, like in an English firm name such as Higgins & Bascom. It’s not a substitute for the word “and.”)
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NEWSLETTER
CHANGES: As I
mentioned, I’m revamping my website, which in itself is both exciting and
confusing. At the same time, I’m also changing my web server and switching my
integrated marketing software in January, all to streamline the service and
make it quicker, safer, and more linkable for you and me. (I’ll probably
include the details in a later newsletter after I’m pleased that all works as
promised! Stay tuned if you’re into net marketing.) I may slightly change the
title then too. But at heart it’s still me, same purpose, and I’m just as eager
to share both new and tested information about writing, speaking, publishing,
and product development.
Contact us at Communication Unlimited
Gordon@gordonburgett.com
/ www.gordonburgett.com
(800) 563-1454 /